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The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary 'stripes, has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
As the elephants passed him he noticed on the legs of a few of them marks which were evidently old scars of chain or rope-galls. And the forehead of one or two showed traces of having been daubed with tar, while on the trunk of one very large tusker was an almost obliterated ornamental design in white paint, and his tusks were tipped with brass.
The big tusker Bisgaum arrived, and giving my Paradox gun to my trustworthy shikari Kerim Bux, he mounted the pad of that excitable beast to carry out my orders, "to follow the blood until he should find the tiger, after which he was to return to us."
There was water to drink and bathe in, and shade to rest in when the sun beat down too hot on the jungle. So the elephants liked it there. But one day when Umboo and Batu were thinking up another fun-trick to play on Keedah, suddenly the trumpet call of Tusker was heard again. "More danger!" exclaimed Umboo. "I wonder what it is this time?" "Let us go ask," suggested Batu.
A low signal, passed from one to another, apprised the most distant that the quarry was afoot. Rapidly they converged toward the trail, taking positions in trees down wind from the point at which Tantor must pass them. Silently they waited and presently were rewarded by the sight of a mighty tusker carrying an amount of ivory in his long tusks that set their greedy hearts to palpitating.
His teeth had gone, all but two buck-teeth which stuck out at each corner of his mouth, giving him the look of a tusker. I could see his lips moving uneasily in the glare of the pine boughs, and his eyes darted about the company as if seeking countenance. Ringan was speaking very gravely, with his eyes shining like sword points.
He was trying to think what was the best thing for him to do, for he was the leader of the herd, and they would all do as he did, just as a flock of sheep will follow the old ram, even on the dangerous railroad track sometimes. "Come!" trumpeted Tusker through his trunk, "we will go between the two fences to the salt springs."
When they attempted to drag him backwards from the tree near which he was noosed, he laid hold of it with his trunk and lay down on his side immoveable. The temple tusker and another were ordered up to assist, and it required the combined efforts of the three elephants to force him along.
Although for very many years I have hunted both in Asia and Africa I have never seen a sick elephant in a wild state, neither have I ever come across an example of imbecility through age. It is rarely we discover a dead elephant that has not met with a violent death, and only once in my life have I by accident found the remains of a tusker with the large tusks intact.
A record of planter life in India, however, such as this aims at being, would be incomplete without some reference to the gallant tusker, and so at the risk of tiring my readers, I must try to describe a pig-sticking party. There are two distinct kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey. Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more pugnacious.
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